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Biomedical subjects

M B Patterson

Publications and source records attributed to M B Patterson.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Impact of adult age and Alzheimer's disease on levels of neural noise for letter matching.

We tested healthy young and older adults as well as higher-scoring (Mini-Mental State Exam, MMSE, scores between 14-20) and lower-scoring patients diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) on a letter-matching task. Subjects were instructed to respond "same" if two simultaneously presented letters were identical, or "different" if the letters did not match. Healthy older adults showed a larger "fast-same" effect than healthy young adults. Also, higher-scoring AD patients showed a large "false-different" effect for errors, but lower-scoring AD patients showed a large "false-same" effect. These data indicate that older adults exhibit higher neural noise levels than younger adults. The cross-over error pattern for AD suggests that moderately demented AD patients show evidence of forming degraded visual percepts whereas more severely demented AD patients show evidence of forming incomplete percepts.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Assessment of functional ability in Alzheimer disease: a review and a preliminary report on the Cleveland Scale for Activities of Daily Living.

Assessment of activities of daily living (ADL) in Alzheimer disease (AD) is critical in establishing the diagnosis, monitoring disease progression, evaluating the efficacy of treatment interventions, and determining the need for health and social services. The proper method to measure ADL depends on the purposes to which the scale is to be put. Existing ADL scales differ as to the type of behaviors assessed, the nature of the observations made, and the manner in which the observations are quantified. These scales were not specifically designed to evaluate changes in the nature and extent of the broad spectrum of functional difficulties seen in individuals with AD. We describe the Cleveland Scale for Activities of Daily Living (CSADL), an informant-based instrument designed to expand upon the capacity of existing physical and instrumental ADL scales by assessing both premorbid and current component acts (e.g., initiation versus implementation) of daily living functions.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1988

Severe illness in older patients: the association between depressive disorders and functional dependency during the recovery phase.

An association between depression and physical dependency arising from a recent illness has been generally accepted. To clarify this relationship over time, 30 medical rehabilitation patients aged 54 to 94 years were assessed 1 week after admission and at discharge to quantify symptoms of depression, physical dependency, and cognitive functioning using the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAM-D), the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), the Barthel Index for physical function, and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Significant depressive symptomatology was found by HAM-D in 25 patients on admission and 14 on discharge. No significant associations were present between either admission or discharge depression scores and all other variables. The HAM-D change score was significantly correlated with the Barthel change score (r = 0.57, P less than 0.001) and with the MMSE change score (r = 0.48, P = 0.01). All patients whose mood improved also improved in physical functioning, whereas 75% of those whose mood did not improve failed to make headway in physical functioning. This implies that it is not the degree of physical incapacity but rather the failure to regain prior abilities which is strongly associated with persisting depression following a catastrophic illness. Furthermore, characteristics found commonly in the group whose mood did not improve included physicians' failure to diagnose and treat depression or a setback from a significant medical or surgical complication.

Aged↗
PubMed1988

A statistical evaluation of the literature regarding the associations among alcoholism, drug abuse, and antisocial personality disorder.

Prior literature suggested an association among alcoholism, drug abuse, and antisocial personality disorder. A meta-analysis of inferential studies bearing on these associations was performed on 40 studies. Results demonstrated that each diagnosis in the triad had a significant positive association with each of the other two. Possible common etiologies of the diagnoses were discussed. Presence of one of the three diagnoses suggests that consideration of the other two is advisable. Finally, interrelationships among the diagnoses may explain treatment results common to several of the diagnoses.

Alcoholism↗
PubMed1985

Multiple sclerosis: understanding the psychologic implications.

To effectively care for individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) the practitioner must be able to understand the common psychologic sequellae. These include not only those engendered by the patient's reaction to the disease, but also those reflecting alterations in central nervous system function. Although research literature on MS has many pitfalls and the quality of the results is thus uneven, important psychologic aspects of MS that have been consistently reported are depression and anxiety, euphoria, often in association with some degree of dementia, denial of illness or of impairments, irritability and apathy, coexisting psychiatric disorders, and cognitive impairment, particularly involving sensorimotor function, primary memory, and conceptual ability.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Neuropsychological analysis of a case of reduplicative paramnesia.

Following a right cerebral hemispheric CVA, a patient showed extensive reduplication of place (his hospital) and occasional reduplication of person. His language was essentially intact, but he was deficient on tests of conceptualization and on nonverbal tasks, both visual and auditory. Short- and long-term memory for nonverbal but not verbal material were also impaired. However, he had sufficient "memory" for the reduplicated hospitals to comment that they were spatially identical. He simply seemed unable to treat these memories as representing the same phenomena. Neuropsychological analysis suggest that reduplicative paramnesia represents a combination of perceptual and memory deficits as well as impaired ability to integrate information.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1985

Psychomotor decline can be described by discontinuities in response trajectories.

Force exerted in the isometric button-press response in a choice reaction time experiment was measured in order to study discontinuities in the response trajectory. Groups of young and elderly subjects were compared on performance with four choice reaction time tasks of varying difficulty. An additional comparison (with one task only) was made with a group of brain-damaged subjects. Velocity changes within the response trajectory were used to locate its discontinuities. The principal finding was that response discontinuities were least frequent in young subjects, intermediate in elderly, and most frequent in brain-damaged. Also, in the comparison of young and elderly across four stimulus conditions, the number of discontinuities was greater with more difficult than with easier tasks. Psychomotor decline was interpreted as an increase in the number of response discontinuities.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Assessment of behavioral and affective symptoms in Alzheimer's disease.

Noncognitive behavioral symptoms occurring during the prior week were studied in 34 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and 21 spousal control subjects via caregiver and patient interviews using the Behavioral Pathology in Alzheimer's Disease Rating Scale and the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia. Delusional or paranoid features were reported in 13 subjects (38%) and hallucinations in six (18%); patients with these psychoticlike symptoms had lower scores on the Folstein's Mini-Mental State Examination. Other behavioral symptoms reported in AD patients included anxiety (50%) and activity disturbances (44%). Six AD subjects (18%) and two controls (10%) showed mild to moderate symptoms of depression; AD subjects were more likely than controls to show behavioral signs and symptoms of depression, but the two groups did not differ in terms of mood-related, cyclical, or physical signs and symptoms.

Aged↗